I know that female applicants in physics are more carefully considered for physics phd programs since there are so few of them. I was wondering if anyone knew what they are looking for in females. I am fairly well rounded: I've been published, decent GPA, excellent research experience, a good job working with physics in neurosciences, good gre scores, and really good rec letters. My physics GRE score is not good though but I have heard from alot of professors that female gre scores are not considered as heavily because females tend to do poorly on the physics gre. I was just wondering if anyone had any specific information for women getting into the phd progams for physics. Some numbers and statistics would be nice too or even some links

Is this supposed to be an example of a female doing well on the GRE?
Good for you that you can be so confident about your chances, it's really an impressive record! But can't you use your analytical skills to answer your question yourself?
I wish you lots of fun with physics,
A

No, not an example of a female doing well on the GRE because I'm sure that happens all the time, but an example of condescending arrogance irrespective of gender. Someone had to say it. I mean, c'mon, saying its strange that people are applying to lots of schools when she knows they don't have as good a profile as she has - that's the condescending part. Then saying she will get into both places - that's the arrogant part. She has a guarantee of MIT and no one else does? I do think she is an excellent candidate, but please. There are many applicants with the same kind of records- is there an entitlement attitude that some women have, or do they just want to be given special treatment and that is the solution to the gender disparity? I don't even think its wise to only apply to two places. Why limit your own choices? People may have applied to lots of schools not just because they doubt they can get in, but because people like to have choices and weigh out all the options. And its not just the research or reputation alone that we might think about, its issues of the environment too. And what if the prof. you really wanted just isn't taking students that year.

Devilzadvocate has exactly 2 posts so far both with the same content, and kind of unrelated to the threads posted in. Stop responding to obvious flame-baiting.

And more on topic, as to what schroedingersmistress asked, I don't know of too much statistics and all, but sad to say that even in this day and age there is a a lot of discrimination against women at all stages in their scientific career. One nice indication of how fair and balanced a school is, would be to look at the %age of male vs female grad students currently, and maybe email and talk to some of them personally about the kind of atmosphere in that place.

From some admissions discussions I went to, they said the percentage of men vs. women in a grad. program is reflective of the percentage of men vs. women in the applicant pool. So, the schools won't say they are unfair with that percentage, they just kept the ratios the same as the ratios of those that applied. That makes it competitive for everyone really.

I went to a talk by Meg Urry from Yale. She studies this sort of thing. She talked about atmosphere and said some of the women say they end up hating physics and that women want a more social department while men don't care so much if they are isolated but maybe by sheer numbers they don't feel as isolated. I can't imagine that describes everyone though and I don't know who she sampled. She was pissed when her small daughter came home from school and announced she wasn't any good in math. She totally yelled at her for that and called up the teacher.

i believe men and women are on an equal footing when it comes to ability to do science and i think are a couple different reasons for the lack of women in scientific fields. i dont think it would be a stretch to say that girls are alittle more pressured into social conformity and trying to identify themselves with a group of friends than boys are in high school and college. taking advanced science classes and spending hours studying and stuff makes it hard to be part of a group and engage in female-bonding and eventually that might lead to them being outcast because i think girls at that age are alittle more cliquish than boys. also, the scientific career path as it is now is not conducive to the desires of your typical 20 year old college female. i think if you poll kids on a college campus on where they will be in ten years you will get a much higher percentage of girls saying "married with kids" than guys. i think alot of women want to be settled with a husband and steady job by the time they are 30, and the career path of a budding scientist is not really conducive to that unless they are really brilliant and can quickly bypass the grad school/postdoc phase and get tenure pretty early in their lives.

A terrific username you possess my fiend ...indeed it is reminiscent of the fact that ur brain isn't exactly where it needs to be..
i wonder if you incidentally had anything at all

To come to the pt. u portray the image of a frustrated member of the male community whose 'masculine fervors' have landed him in not-so enviable company. From your previous posts it is clear as broad daylight that ur record is NOTHING compared to mine-who the f*** gives the audacity to comment on mine, then?
To say that I am confident is an understatement , 'cause I am very much sure that no one -No not even rjharris- has a record s scintillating as mine.

Best of luck to you anyway for your application...I am sure u and I won't be doing our phd s from the same place

It's a pity that an MIT undergrad isn't sure of getting into a graduate program of the same instt.
I guess the reason is - I am pretty sure, this IS the reason- no one wants to take you!!!

In case u make it tho', it's pretty obvious u'll want to meet me, for reasons favouring you more than me

Arrogance is a bliss u dumbf*** ing good for nothing chauvinist.
But I guess the almighty has been kind that u are applying to astro. and I to Cond MAtt. Else , it wld have been time to listen to ur death knell......

A college going girl wants to have kids and lead a settled life!!! MAN U SUCK
What I wonder at the time is that u might be one of those silly girls who set the benchmark for the guys to gauge our intellectual abilities.

However, taking you to be one of the male community , I am very sure U'll be the one who'll babysit while your wife takes care of the physic(al)s part

waiting for some brickbats...of course only if the arsenal isn't exhausted as of yet...

pity me I am wasting time with people who have no time for physics 'coz of the very simple reason that they are incapable of comprehending the annals of the subject....

A word of advice to u all: think of alternative career options too...It wld have been my ill luck had I been pursuing a phd program at the same place as u guys..BUT the truth is , the chances of that are 1 in a trillion

I would have hoped someone of your intelligence would have had some tact. Im not trying to be a jerk, but you obviously have a lot of maturing to do, and I think you have some insecurity issues to work out on your own.

someone had to be the mature one...guess it was your turn to step up, JackSkellington. I've had my fun, so devilzadvocate, if you really are at all legitimate (though I'm getting this image of an immature high schooler sitting around trying to ruffle up the feathers of a bunch of stressed out physics seniors), I sincerely hope you learn to respect your peers...it's going to be an awful lonely life if you treat people who are friendly and willing to engage you with utter disrespect. And if you have any design whatsoever to become a bad ass professor at some top institution, you're going to raise some serious red flags if you come across as a polarizer and a megalomaniac...professors do have to teach, attend conferences, work in groups (or at the least, partnerships), and participate in committees...can't be a complete isolationist. Anyway, I think, given your attitude, we've already given you more attention than you deserve, but I don't think anyone on a message board is going to be so obsessed and principle-driven to hold any sort of grudge, so if you start engaging the rest of us like a peer and not like a snotty younger brother (sister), and contribute to the discourse, then your viewpoint may carry a little more weight and actually benefit the people who are or will be observing these threads in the future.

i dunno schmit.paul, your argument there seems to imply that devilzadvocate is still an element contained in the space spanned by the set of positive human personality traits. then by your logic it is possible for her to have positive components along these axes, even if her dot product with the physicist element is zero. nevertheless physics ftw

slee, you are correct...for the joke to have maximal knockout power I should have either 1) restricted my set to the complete set of positive personality traits shared by physicists (and thus the average physicist is a linear combination of ALL of the components of the basis) or 2) assumed from the start that the average physicist has, by the virtue of being a physicist, some amount of EVERY positive human personality trait (an assumption I'm not quite ready to make). It is thus possible that devilzadvocate could have a nonvanishing inner product with some elements of my basis set...my statement would then merely conclude that those nonvanishing inner products correspond to positive personality traits that the average physicist does not have.

I think, though, from the context of the argument, that my intention was clear.

This is hilarious stuff! But, if she is real 4 things might conceivably happen. 1) a DOA (dead on arrival) science career because most research is collaboration dependent (same as what schmit.paul said only in addition to committees, actually working with other people doing science) and clearly she's not going to be able to do that. 2) Her attitude may be reflected in her recommendation letters. So, MIT, the place she is applying that they knew her at will be the one place that wouldn't take her BECAUSE they knew her. Although, on the NOVA, Einstein's Big Idea, it said that Einstein was so obnoxious and arrogant to his professors that he couldn't get recommendation letters and that's how he ended up in the patent office. (I cracked up at that, but it was also funny when Einstein's patent office boss comes in to tell him he is being denied a promotion again. Then it was even funnier when the same comes back to tell him, a messenger from THE Max Planck is there to see him). So, devilzadvocate is going to end up in a patent office and not being Einstein will never get out of it . 3) She'll be very unhappy in grad. school blaming her isolationism on gender when in fact its her attitude and astonishment that people won't bow down to her. 4) She'll be fired for downloading pornography on a federally funded computer. This is real. People were really fired for this at government labs. Since she is common-sense challenged, I predict 4) for her.

She reminds me Trump's Apprentice, where the people with great business skill didn't understand what they did wrong. And Trump says, but you didn't earn the respect of your colleagues, and you can't run one of my companies if no one will respect you or listen to you, 'your fired'. Great show.

ha ha ...that was funny ...u surely are an element of the subspace to which the intelligence axis is orthogonal!!
btw....Dennery & Kryzwicki might be a good place to brush up ur basic concepts on vector spaces.

Sorry to dissapoint all the guys who cannot stand an intelligent and powerful woman...but I REALLY AM A GIRL AND MY STATS R COMPLETELY TRUE.

Last edited by devilzadvocate on Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's amazing how incredibly pompous people can get when they have an anonymous user name to hide behind.

In any case, this person is probably just trying to be irritating: using the phrase "stats are asunder" and mentioning some random dover book to imply some sort of skill or talent is...well, I'd hope that someone who's seemingly done a great job in college would realize that that's a pretty asinine grammatical structure and a pretty asinine way to interact with your peers.

Last edited by dan1234 on Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well i agree that it is easy to hide behind an anonymous username, but if devilzadvocate is who she says she is then she certainly seems to be on her way to a successful career in physics. I'm sure there are alot more people who read this board than just the few who post on it and surely at least a few of them will end up in the physics community as well and maybe will have in the back of their mind that there was this stuck-up chick from UNC who did an internship at IAS as an undergrad. given that there aren't many of those running around so it wouldn't be hard to identify her (if you met her at some point in the future) as the same girl who was posting pictures of guys masturbating and questioning the physics ability of sucessful MIT undergrads with 990 physics GRE scores in which case it might create an embarrasing situation for her if the content of her posts started circulating throughout the physics community.

First off, I haven't seen 'twixt used in a book in like 200 years. Get with the times.

Second off, raped donkey... wtf Is there something you want tell us here....?

So what the hell, let me partake in all the physics phun:

devilzadvocate is a subset of an arrogant sexist.

An arrogant sexist is a subset of devilzadvocate.

Therefore, devilzadvocate is an arrogant sexist.

I can't believe Im taking time to condescend to write a response to someone as pathetic and insecure as devilzadvocate. I think devilzadvocate just wants attention, as evidently she isn't getting enough wherever the hell she is. So, I propose we just ignore her- it will be as if she were never on the forum.

Or we could just keep making physics jokes. What do you guys think?

Last edited by JackSkellington on Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I really fail to comprehend this unnecessary inferority complex of the members of the 'stronger'(I DOUBT) sex bestowed upon themselves by none other than yours truly....c'mon ppl, it is best to accept that I am the best and hence, **** the rest... Bury the hatchet, anyone???

I didn't post a profile including competition awards because everyone could easily find out who I am. It's really sad, but I would expect that female + IPhO silver medal results in a very short list of candidates.

It would be incredibly funny if devilzadvocate were someone's younger sibling mocking them applying to physics graduate school. I love sibling rivalry stories and that would be too funny. I don't believe IAS in Princeton has an internship program. We would have heard of it. I also don't believe at least a domestic student knows about or takes the international physics olympiad test in high school (it is high school level isn't it?). I didn't think that was that common for American students or more people on this list would have the same accolade. Also, realistically, 1 publication per 10 week summer job is unlikely at least not for first author publications and if that did happen much of the research must have been setup before she arrived or a bit of hand holding in that quick a time frame. She also has a very high verbal score not reflected in her verbal ability shown to us. Her shock value topics are interfering with the real discussion, but I say we make fun of her further .

It's true, but I'm afraid that the GRE verbal score does mean nothing about the verbal ability. devilzavocate is either a troll or a person suffering of a kind of superiority complex, and in both case it is very bad. Smart people don't need to show off that way. People know you are smart when they talk to you.

so, speaking as a senior physics major at unc, i don't think this devilzadvocate person actually exists. i've checked out a couple databases for publications under any of the possible names, and nothing turns up. also, the "facts" definitely don't check out with anyone i know, and believe me, it'd be hard for me to not know a fellow physics woman here, seeing as there's so many of us (heh).

as to what the purpose of pretending on some online forum is, i have no idea. i hope at least you had fun before you got called out, devilzadvocate.

devilzadvocate, I'm calling you out. If you're for real, then post, in as much detail as humanly possible, the wording of your MIT offer and the full contents of the package you received in the mail. Then the already-admitted posters can judge whether or not you're full of ***. I'm guessing you are.